Fleetwood Mac / Mystery To Me

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • Boasting two STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them, we guarantee you’ve never heard the band’s 1973 release sound remotely as good as it does on the vintage Reprise pressing
  • This copy is super open and spacious with an abundance of energy and incredible presence
  • The bottom end is just killer and there’s dramatically more richness and fullness than what we heard on practically all other copies in our most recent shootout
  • “Throughout Mystery to Me, the amazing and almost telepathic drums and bass of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie give this effort more panache and muscle than was represented on this effort’s predecessor, Bare Trees. The best Bob Welch offering, ‘Keep on Going,’ has a strong, soulful string arrangement and Christine McVie’s customary sensual and poised vocals … This effort is custom-made for those who like thoughtful offerings and is a valuable set in the scheme of the band.”

Mystery To Me is my All Time Favorite Fleetwood Mac album, and this copy has the sound that I always dreamed this album could have, but didn’t — until now. This is just the third Hot Stamper shootout that we’ve been able to do, since clean copies with the right stampers are ridiculously hard to come by. I’m not kidding. We must have spent the last ten years and more trying to find the right stampers for this record. I can tell you we were dead wrong so many times in the past that we had almost given up. Time and time again, just when I thought we had it figured out, we would go back and play our so-called “hot” copy, to find ourselves miserably disappointed all over again.

Half the copies you find of this record are mud and the other half have no bass. If my math is correct, that leaves zero copies that aren’t muddy and actually have bass. That comports rather well with what I was finding: under test conditions zero of the copies we played sounded any good. We were sorely vexed. Sorely, sorely vexed.

Then the skies opened up and the sun began to shine.

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And Here I Thought the Porky/Pecko Pressings Would All Sound Awesome

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Folk Rock Albums Available Now

This is a highly unusual post for us here at Better Records, the first of its kind. We just did a shootout for Solomon’s Seal last week and here we are practically the very next day giving out the Shootout Winning stampers on the blog, and for free no less.

As you might have expected, we have a self-serving reason for revealing this information, and it should become obvious to you what that reason is by simply checking out the stamper sheet from the shootout shown below.

We often get requests from our readers to give out the “right” stampers, the “best” stampers, the stampers they should “look for.”

Well, readers, here you go. Have at ’em. Everything you need to know is right there on the sheet: the stampers, the grades, the engineer’s marks, even the grades for the not-recommended domestic pressings.

All the UK stampers are A4/B4 with PORKY/PECKO in the dead wax. (The early domestic pressings are decent, but they cannot begin to compete with the Brits for sound quality. You can safely avoid them unless you are on a strict budget and do not own very high quality equipment, or don’t care much for The Pentangle.)

As you can see from the grades, the best copy was killer, but a copy with the same stampers had sound that would not even qualify as a minimally Hot Stamper pressing. That’s quite a range, but it’s a range that we come across more often than many audiophiles might think would be the case.

If you have only one copy of the original British LP, where do you think yours would rank in terms of sound quality? Is it 3+, or 1+, or perhaps something in between?

(Chances are good it is something in between. Where in between, who can possibly say? That’s a question only a shootout can answer.)

And make special note of the fact the only one copy had even one Triple Plus Shootout Winning side. What would have happened if that one copy had not been part of the shootout?

Oh, this whole shootout business seems to be getting much too complicated much too quickly. Let’s just do what audiophiles have been doing for decades and ignore all these complications. Let’s pretend that the original Reprise British pressings with PORKY/PECKO stampers sound great and leave it at that. Anything else is just too much trouble, don’t you think?

It turns out that knowing the best stampers for Solomon’s Seal is no help at all. The best stampers and the worst stampers are the same stampers!

That’s not a problem for us. It’s how shootouts are done. Our listening panel never knows what pressing is playing, or what pressing is supposed to be the best.

They also know not to ask such silly questions. They’re there to find the answer, not be told ahead of time or reason their way to it.

Reasoning is what the Audiophile Reviewer Class likes to do. Here at Better Records we do experiments to get to the truth. Only one of those two methods will help you find better pressings, and if you know much about records, you know that reasoning plays almost no part in the process.

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The Moody Blues – In Search Of The Lost Chord

More of the Music of The Moody Blues

  • Incredible sound throughout this early UK pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “jumping out of the speakers”…”big and tubey”…”sweet and breathy vox”…”weighty and rich”…”much more transparent and detailed” (side two)
  • Chock full of Moodies Magic: warm, full-bodied, rich and smooth, with tremendous space and plenty of rock energy
  • The first Moody Blues album to feature their trademark mellotron arrangements, and what a glorious sound that is when it sounds like this
  • “…the album on which the Moody Blues discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns.”

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The Pentangle – Solomon’s Seal

More British Folk Rock

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom, this original British Reprise pressing is doing most everything right – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich, energetic, with an abundance of Analog Tubey Magic, this UK copy has exactly the right sound for this music
  • Surprisingly rich and smooth, with excellent bass and the kind of breathy immediacy to the vocals that only vintage vinyl can offer

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Blue – Rhino Records Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

In March of 2007 we decided we would not be carrying the new 180 gram Rhino pressing of Blue remastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray. We noted at the time: 

Since Kevin and Steve are were friends of mine I won’t belabor its shortcomings. Let’s just say I think you can do better.

The following is an excerpt from our first successful Hot Stamper shootout from that same year. Blue has only gotten better sounding — dramatically better sounding, if I may say so myself — since then.

The copy of Blue we are offering today is one of the few that sounded good before. Now it sounds really good. It got much quieter after applying some of our new cleaning techniques, and the sound became even warmer, richer, sweeter and more transparent.

Both sides sound wonderful — rich, sweet, and delicate. The warmth, breath, and presence of Joni’s vocals take this copy to a place light years beyond the typical copy, not to mention any reissue. The guitars sound amazing, particularly on side two, and the piano has weight without hardness. There’s tons of energy and lots of ambience, plus real depth to the soundfield — you really hear INTO this copy. Try that with your Rhino LP.

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Simple Minds – Sparkle in the Rain

More Rock and Pop

  • An original UK Virgin import pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from start to finish
  • This British pressing is huge, spacious and rich, with prodigious amounts of bass, guaranteed to sound better than any other copy you’ve heard (particularly on side two)
  • “For Sparkle in the Rain, [the band] sought U2 producer Steve Lillywhite, whose approach helped shape their performances into a forceful, direct set of commercial rock designed to shake nosebleed seats. [T]he move worked.”

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The Worst Sounding Track on Seventh Sojourn Is the Hit Single

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Moody Blues Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Notes from an early shootout:

We had a bunch of British and Dutch imports to play, and we did hear some good sound, just not the kind of good sound we’ve heard on earlier albums. If you like this album we’re pretty sure you will have a hard time finding a copy that sounds even remotely this good. Most of them are much much worse. Dreadful in fact.

One more thing: the big hit from the album: I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock & Roll Band) did not sound good on any copy. The master went to make the single, and a dub was spliced onto the tape for the album.

One Stamper Wins

As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins our shootouts for this album.  Click on this link to see other titles with one set of stamper numbers that always come out on top.

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Massed Strings and Brass Sections Are Difficult to Reproduce

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jacques Offenbach Available Now

UPDATE 2020

Our current favorite recording of the work is the one Fistoulari recorded for Readers Digest.

Since that is a pressing we don’t expect to be able to offer to our customers again, Readers Digest vinyl being what it is, allow us to point you in the direction of a different album of Offenbach’s music you may enjoy reading about and should definitely consider buying the next time you see it on the site.

Our Previous Commentary

It’s also an excellent record to test with. As you no doubt know, there is a lot of “action” in this piece of music.

To get the strings and the brass to sound lively yet natural is a bit of a trick. (It doesn’t help that the polarity is reversed.)

When I first played this record many years ago, I was none too happy about the string tone. After making a few tweaky adjustments, the strings became much clearer and more textured. The overall presentation still sounded rich, but was now dramatically more natural and relaxed.

It was this record that made me realize some of the changes I had made to my stereo back then had caused it to have a certain hi-fi-ish quality, which seemed to work fine on the popular and jazz recordings I was using as test discs at the time.

But the reproduction of classical music is the ultimate challenge for any stereo.

And this record was telling me I wasn’t getting it right. I’m happy to report that things are sounding wonderful now, on every kind of record: jazz, rock and especially on excellent classical recordings such as this one, on Readers Digest no less (!)

A famous jazz album by Michel LeGrand was also helpful in getting my playback to be more correct.

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The Weavers – At Home

More Folk, Rock and Pop

  • The Weavers At Home appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • The sound throughout this original Stereo Vanguard pressing is rich, full-bodied, lively, and warm, with breathy, clear vocals
  • Remarkably present, real and resolving, this pressing is guaranteed to murder any remastering undertaken by anyone – past, present and future
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • The mono pressings we played on the early Red Label were passable, even good on some sides, but they are very unlikely to ever win a shootout, so for that reason it is doubtful that we will bother with them in the future. This is a stereo recording from 1959 and it’s clear to us that it will sound better in stereo

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Another London with Dry Strings (on Some Copies)

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca & London Available Now

On some copies of this album the strings are dry, lacking the full measure of Tubey Magic we know the tape to have. This is decidedly not our sound, although we’ve heard if often enough, having played hundreds of vintage Decca and London pressings over the years.

If you have a rich sounding cartridge, perhaps with that little dip in the upper midrange that so many moving coils have these days, you will not notice this tonality issue nearly as much as we do.

Our 17D3 is ruler flat and quite unforgiving in this regard. While it certainly makes our shootouts much easier, it does bring out the flaws in all but the best pressings — exactly the job we require it to do.

Here are some other records that are good for testing string tone and texture.

With a sonic grade of A++, the sound is glorious, with practically all of the qualities that make listening to classical music in analog so involving. The presentation is shockingly three-dimensional, with an exceptionally wide and deep stage. The orchestral sound is rich and sweet, yet the guitar is clear and immediate. Managing to balance — so effortlessly — two dissimilar elements such as these, in 1959 no less, requires an enormous amount of skill and effort. Fifty-odd years later, those of us with good turntables are profoundly thankful for their achievement, in terms of both performance and sound.

If you were only to be allowed one Guitar Concerto recording, this would probably be the one to own. You will recognize the main theme instantly; it’s the one Miles Davis appropriated for the astonishingly innovative Sketches of Spain album he did with Gil Evans which came out the following year in 1960.

Side One – Guitar Concerto: “Concerto De Aranjuez” (1939)

A++, including all the qualities we discussed above, with an especially immediate and real solo guitar.

With a bit more top end extension this side would have been White Hot. It should be noted that no Decca or London copy in our shootout had as much top end as we would have liked on the Rodrigo, a fault perhaps in the recording?

Side Two – Fantasìa Para Un Gentilhombre (1954)

A++, equally good in its own way. Rich and lush strings, but slightly veiled compared to side one. So musical and analog, although, like many concerto recordings, the guitar is much larger in the soundfield of the recording than it would be in the concert hall.

The music is reminiscent of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, for those of you familiar with the work (a longtime resident of the TAS List. Wish we could find them!).

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